DHAKA — Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina to death in absentia Monday over a 2024 student-led crackdown in one of the freedom movement’s homicide cases, as authorities banned street protests fearing unrest, the Nov.
The three-judge panel had found Hasina guilty of crimes against humanity, and specifically for ordering drones, helicopters, and lethal weapons to crush the civilian uprising, according to a report in The Guardian. She denied doing anything wrong and described the process against her as a “politically motivated charade.”
The death sentence on Sheikh Hasina increases pressure on India, where the 78-year-old and her family have lived since her government was overthrown. She stepped down and left the country in August 2024, and Bangladesh has called on New Delhi to send her back after Monday’s ruling.
The tribunal delivered another death sentence in the same case to Asaduzzaman Khan, an ex-Home Minister, and gave five years to a former police chief who had been a prosecution witness. Both were tried in absentia, and Hasina’s party decried the verdict as illegitimate.
An appeal to the Supreme Court is allowed under Bangladeshi law. Hasina’s family has stated that they won’t file one unless an elected government is in office. The Sheikh Hasina death penalty will likely ratchet up political tensions before the elections scheduled for early 2026.
The ruling came after months of inquiry into a three-week crackdown that resulted in as many as 1,400 killed, according to earlier figures from the U.N. human rights office this year. The authorities have been accused of summary executions and opening fire on unarmed protesters.
Previous estimates from Bangladeshi officials had the number of people who were killed at more than 1,000 and thousands injured, a report by Reuters on Aug. 29, 2024, said. The Sheikh Hasina death sentence was the climax of a campaign by the interim authorities to try those held responsible for the bloodletting.
The wave of protests began as campus demonstrations against a government jobs quota and quickly spread across the country. The early fighting left at least a dozen dead, Reuters reported on July 18, 2024, before snowballing into the country’s worst political conflict since independence.
After Hasina’s ouster, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was installed as the head of an interim government that promised transparency and accountability in any prosecutions related to the 2024 roundup.
The tribunal itself has had a controversial history. Rights groups have long called for it to guarantee safeguards and fair-trial protections for the International Crimes Tribunal, established to prosecute atrocities committed during the 1971 war; Human Rights Watch raised due-process concerns as far back as 2011.
Those who support the verdict say it brings some measure of justice to the families of slain protesters. Critics say the Sheikh Hasina death sentence poses the risk of further polarization as Bangladesh seeks to manage a tumultuous transition and hold long-awaited elections in early 2026.
